Site posts alpha Battlefield 3 benchmarks

It looks like a leaked build of Battlefield 3 might be making the rounds on the interwebs. Last month, an unofficial video of Battlefield 3's multiplayer popped up on YouTube. Today, a Russian gaming website has gone one step further and benchmarked an alpha build of the game—or so it claims.

At best, this is an inconclusive look at Battlefield 3's performance, since the full game isn't due out until October 25. (GameGPU also explains that "many graphical elements" are missing from the alpha, and it says tests were run in an empty multiplayer map.) At worst, this could be a total hoax. Nevertheless, something about it just seems too juicy to pass up.

According to the site's numbers, the GeForce GTX 460 1GB and Radeon HD 6850 both managed average frame rates of around 38 FPS. However, their minimums were 26 FPS and 29 FPS, respectively. Only graphics cards a rung up the performance ladder—the GeForce GTX 470 and Radeon HD 6870—kept the frame-rate counter above 30 FPS.

Interestingly, GameGPU also ran some CPU benchmarks, and it claims that dual-core chips induced a major performance hit. Looking at the bar graph, it indeed looks like the Battlefield 3 alpha puts quad cores to good use... if these tests are legit, of course. (Thanks to PC Perspective for the link.)